


A Lot Like Mourning

by catchmeifyoucreon



Series: Supernatural Shorts [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Character of Color, F/F, Female-Centric, Femslash, Ghosts, Hospitals, Journalism, POV Female Character, Women of Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 08:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15703197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catchmeifyoucreon/pseuds/catchmeifyoucreon
Summary: Cassie is investigating a fire that killed a woman. At the hospital, she meets Jess. These two things may be connected.





	A Lot Like Mourning

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for major character death. This is a crosspost with minor edits from my Tumblr. You can find the original post [here](http://nyebevans.tumblr.com/post/42182597746/cassiejess-for-sherierenescott-au-cw-for-death) on my blog, though I'm no longer in the SPN fandom.

Cassie’s father dies two years after Cassie finishes college. Her mother doesn’t cope well alone, ringing Cassie twice a day to talk. Eventually, she decides to give up her job as a columnist for her local paper. She moves back into her mother’s house in Missouri.

There, she knows everyone in town and everyone in town knows her and, if that’s what happiness is, then Cassie is happy. She works freelance, travelling to outlying towns for stories to sell. Sometimes, when the days drag on and the only stories are the ones she makes up in her head to while the time away, she longs to drive further: over the state line and off into the sunset. ~~~~

One day, she gets a call from a contact telling her about a fire in a house two towns over. Cassie leaps straight into her car, ignoring her mother’s protests (“The sun hasn’t even risen, and you’re already off out?”) and speeding off down the highway with the window wide and the radio blaring Zeppelin into the rising dawn. Reds and pinks flare up into the sky in front of her, laid out like an oil painting she’s not quite rich enough to buy.

The smell of smoke is still thick in the air as she pulls up in the street her contact told her to visit. The house itself is in ruins, razed to its foundations. Cassie coaxes a comment or two from the exhausted firemen. One inadvertently lets slip that an occupant of the house was rushed to a nearby hospital, and if it’s unethical of him to tell her, she doesn’t stop to moralise.

Five minutes later, she roars into the hospital parking lot, cursing as she’s forced to swerve to avoid another car.

She’s hoping to catch a young nurse off-guard, early in the morning. Maybe she can be the first to get a name. Instead, she finds the hospital quiet, almost eerily so. She slips through the corridors unseen, not knowing what she hopes to do if she  _does_  find the victim of the fire.

Cassie turns a corner and jumps as she almost trips over a woman standing by the window, looking out into the hospital gardens.

“Whoa! Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t see you there.”

The woman turns, lips parted slightly in an ‘o’ of surprise, and  _damn_ , if she isn’t the most beautiful woman Cassie’s seen in a while. The early dawn send glittering sparks through the window and illuminates her face in a halo of light.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the girl says. She smiles and tilts her head apologetically. “I was in a world of my own.”

“I know that feeling,” Cassie says. “I’m Cassie, by the way.”

“Jess,” says the woman, sticking out a hand. Her skin is soft and cool, and Cassie feels the slow tingle of desire spreading out beneath her skin.

“Nice to meet you,” Cassie says. “It’s sure quiet around here today.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Jess says, as if she’d given it no thought before Cassie pointed it out. “Odd,” she adds. “It looks like it’ll be such a beautiful day, though.”

She says it so earnestly that Cassie doesn’t think of the inanity of weather talk. Instead, she says: “A good day for a roadtrip.”

“You’re going on a roadtrip?” Jess asks. Cassie sighs.

“No, I just…wish I was,” she says. Jess smiles, serene.

“What’s stopping you? You could drive away now.”

The world is doing strange things around them, Cassie is sure, but her attention is riveted on Jess. On the mole on her cheek, the clear gloss slicked over her lips, the ash blonde curls tumbling past her shoulders. Everything is glazed in a sheen of light.

She is closer to Jess than she was before, but she doesn’t know who took the steps. “I could,” she says, and it sounds less like a question that she intended. Jess quirks her eyebrows.

“There you go, then,” she says. “You could. It might be difficult, but you could.”

Cassie’s mind wades through the words like a swimmer through a quagmire. Something feels off, but she can’t grasp it with any certainty. “Maybe I will,” she says. “After I – after I’m –”

Jess’ hand clenches suddenly, the pads of her fingers curling into themselves around Cassie’s arm. “ Sorry,” she says. “I feel a little faint.”

“Oh my God,” Cassie says. “Are you a patient here? I didn’t – shall I call a nurse?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” says Jess. She sits herself down on the nearby window seat, and somehow Cassie finds herself pulled into the space beside her.

“Are you sure?” Cassie says.

“Don’t worry about me,” says Jess. “You know, there’s a man here who’s just lost his fiancée in a fire?”

“That’s awful,” Cassie says, and then the words click for her. “Oh, that’s why – that’s actually why I’m here.”

“Oh?” Jess’ shoulder is pressed against Cassie’s side. “Do you know him?”

“No,” Cassie says. She’s about to elaborate, but Jess just nods. 

“I don’t think you should try to speak with him,” she says. “From what I’ve heard, he’s not doing so good.” Her eyes, when Cassie meets them, brim with tears. Cassie longs to do something, to take away her pain, to take away the pain of the man dealing with his fiancee’s death on his own.

“You can’t,” Jess says, as if reading her mind.

They sit there for a long time, shoulder to shoulder, in silence. It feels a lot like mourning.

*

Two days later, Cassie is in a diner somewhere in the wilds of west Kansas, trying in vain to catch the attention of a waitress, when there’s a startled noise from behind her. 

She glances round, only to find Jess standing there, staring at her with wide, blue eyes, as if Cassie is the most incredible thing she’s ever seen in her entire life.

“Cassie!” Jess says. “You’re taking your roadtrip after all?”

Cassie nods. “Yeah, I guess I am." She doesn't know what possesses her to go on, but she does anyway. "Would you like – do you want to join me?”

Jess slides into the seat opposite her. She grins over at Cassie like she’s known her for years, and they talk about journeys and music and colours and revolutionaries: all of those things Cassie supposes people need to know before they commit. Commit to what, she isn’t yet sure.

*

Jess Moore’s parents don’t have a body to bury. Cassie’s mother wants to feel sorry for them, but all she feels is numb. The newspapers lie on the kitchen table, unread. The one on top reads: “STUDENT, 22, DIES IN HOUSE FIRE”. The other is buried below.

“JOURNALIST, 25, DIES IN ROAD ACCIDENT OUTSIDE HOSPITAL.”


End file.
